EAT LIKE A ONE-PERCENTER

Are you furious at the inflated price of eggs? How about a $5 Happy Meal or a $6 bag of potato chips?

It’s just pennies to a one-percenter.

One-percenters are the top richest people, earning more than 99 percent of the rest of us (below). Their world is filled with the power and luxury of great wealth. In America, one-percenters earn over $820,000 a year.

While you might struggle with the cost of a gallon of milk, one-percenters feast on different delights. Keep in mind that these one-percenter prices vary by company, quality, and availability.

Consider coffee. You can brew it at home for roughly 26 cents a cup. Coffee shops raise the price to an average $4.90. Starbuck’s charges $5.21 for a Caffe Mocha.

If you’re a one-percenter you might opt for Kopi Luwak coffee. It’s brewed from beans found inside berries eaten, digested, and pooped out by the Asian Palm Civet. The cat-like critter roams the forest at night, climbing up trees, and eating ripe, sweet coffee cherries. The civets digest them and poop . . .

People pick out the partially-digested beans from the poop, clean and dry them, and roast to make coffee.

Sound good? Guinness World Records rates it as the most expensive coffee in the world. Kopi Luwak is farmed or collected wild. The amount produced each year is limited so prices vary, like $100 for a cup or $1,000 per pound (see below).

If you’re interested, you can always get Black Ivory (elephant poop) or Monkey Poop coffees.

Talk about a lot of . . . poop.

Sweeten your Kopi Luwak with Peri Bali or Elvish Honey priced at $7,000 for 2.2 pounds. This exotic honey comes from caves almost 6,000 feet deep, in Artvin, Turkey. The bees make honey on cave walls that supposedly give it a mineral flavor. Robin Shreeves asked in Treehugger, “Does this make it worth the price? I think most of us would say, no, but there are those who are paying it.”

Think again. Maybe your food bill isn’t all that bad?

What makes one-percenter foods so expensive?

If a food is scarce and demand exceeds supply, prices go up. Think chicken. It’s readily available and reasonably priced. You can make it at home, get it frozen, in a drive-thru, or at the fanciest restaurants. Now think black chicken or Ayam Cemani. It’s a rare breed of chicken from Indonesia. The critter carries a gene that causes hyper-pigmentation, making it black, inside and out. Many locals believe it’s magical – bringing good luck and good health. The Ayam Cemani  carries a magical price of $2,500 each.

There’s also the issue of production. The price goes up when making the food is labor intensive – requiring human hands.

Take a whiff of the spice called saffron. Some people label it “red gold” although it probably costs more than the gold chain on your neck.

The spice comes from the saffron crocus flower, which only blooms for a week or two every year. It’s made from the flower’s three stigmas (threads). Production requires hundreds of human workers and about 75,000 flowers to make one pound. TASTE says it costs more than silver, at a bargain price of $10-$20 per gram (about the same size as a teaspoon of water) or as much as $600 a pound.

Last, but far from least, is the food many consider to be the most expensive in the world: caviar.

Caviar is fish eggs that vary in size, color, and flavor; processed, salted; and non-fertilized. Don’t confuse them with the tobiko and ikura you get on sushi. Caviar is in a class of its own.

There are four main types of caviar, all from the Sturgeon fish.

The cheapest and most common is Sévruga, sturgeon caviar that comes from the Caspian Sea, and runs at least $45 an ounce.

The next least expensive, Osciétre, comes from farmed sturgeons, costs at least $90 an ounce.

Beluga caviar comes from the Beluga sturgeon in the Black Sea. It’s relatively rare. Presently, the fish is categorized as an endangered species. You will pay well over $200 an ounce.

The king of caviar is Almas. It’s from an albino beluga sturgeon that is 60-100 years old and lives in the southern Caspian Sea. Almas is extremely rare. At $35,000 for 2.2 pounds, it costs more than a Toyota Prius.

Feast or drive?

I hope you enjoyed the virtual experience of eating like a one-percenter. There’s more to come!

Check out next week: EAT LIKE A ONE-PERCENTER: KINGLY DELIGHTS